6/16: Originally, M&W Repair told us, “We’re closed for the weekend and the earliest we can get the part is Monday.” My family vacation sob story, and my sniveling about non-refundable campground payments didn’t gain much traction with the main foreman. After a heated discussion with the rental company, M B Thomas Winnebago signed off on Plan B which was to grease the wheels a bit with the almighty greenback. So when discussions subsequently changed to: “Think you guys can work with us on elevated rates to fix this by tomorrow?”, their response was “Let’s see what we can do.” To make a long story short, we got a call at 10:30 a.m. Saturday after our 6:00 p.m. Friday drop-off and the Beast was returned fully functional (for the time being…). The moral as we all know: “Money talks and B.S. walks.”Once we got our wheels back, we headed farther north to the state capital, Helena (“Queen of the Rockies”). Pronounced HEL-e-na, the former He-LAY-na pronunciation was voted down because it sounded too feminine to the masculine miners. The city’s glory days were in the late 1800s frequented as a large gold mining town – at one point more millionaires per capita lived in Helena than any city in the world. Today the population of the state capital stands at a mere 26,000. As we viewed from our train car tour, not much remains of the town other than some very cool-looking Victorian homes, some historic brick buildings in the rundown downtown area, a couple mine shafts, and an extravagant state capitol building. Lewis & Clark get a lot of play time in the area too, as about one-fourth of their exploration took place in what is now Montana. Weather permitting, we may check out a piece of the expedition tomorrow.
(Whitney with the “The Last Chance Tour” train conductor, Rocky)
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